I Do Not Live, Work, breath in the Abstract : This is Real

Yes, last night was historic. As much as I wanted to bask in it, feel it, cry for it, and jump for it, it was hard.

For the past few days I have been in the middle of a family crisis. My dear tia/madrina, the one who was always just down the block from me my whole life, una segunda madre, was diagnosed with a rapidly growing brain tumor. I have spent countless hours in the same hospital where I gave birth to Miss Poroto, pero now filling out papers to make medical decisions for a single mother who worked her ass off her whole life even when she should have been resting. She pulled me close to her in the hospital bed and in between incoherent comments, she told me the color flowers she wanted at her funeral, that she didn’t want to be incapacitated, that she had let people down, that she was in debt, to take care of her only daughter whose eventual one day wedding she would miss, that she wouldn’t see Miss Poroto grow up and damnit would she be able to vote in this historic election. Si she worrie

As I write this from my apartment, surgeons are operating on my titi. Looking into her brain that they mapped using dye, looking at what doesn’t look good.

Yesterday, as I blogged all day and almost all nite on the election, I was called in to be on live tv to discuss the election. I told them I would pero only if they had someone there who could help me with the kids. My familia was at the hospital, el chileno was working. The tv network agreed. As the car service that was sent called to tell me they were downstairs, Poroto took a huge shit. In the car over from Queens to brooklyn, Poroto vomited all over herself and me. I walked into the tv studio with a half naked toddler and me smelling like regurgitated fruit. I tried to control Poroto as I was made up for tv and tried my best to scrape off quickly drying bits of vomit. A producer whisked Poroto away as I went into the studio to discuss the election, Latino vote, immigration, and blogging. A fellow panelist, a professor asked what I blogged about while we were on break. I told her Latino issues and the mami’hood. As I explained the mami’hood concept to her, I mentioned that I was covered in toddler vomit.

So you don’t write from the abstract, this is what you are living.

No I don’t do anything from the abstract. I do not have that luxury.

As I left the set and the fantasy world of tv punditry I got to play in for an hour, my sister called me to tell me that even after the operation, the prognosis for my tia didn’t look good. Days. We are looking at days.
Once at home, with the toddler asleep and washed up, I paced, smoked cigarettes, drank and blogged as Obama became the president elect. I worried about upcoming speaking events, money, trips and death. And I cried along with the rest of a nation, although probably not for the same reasons.